Press & data kit

Is My City Encrypted tracks whether U.S. police, fire, and EMS radio is encrypted — the "going dark" trend that removes public-safety communications from public scanners. Everything below is free to cite, embed, and download. Snapshot as of 2026-06-18.

Methodology: /methodology. License: CC-BY-4.0. Data sourced from RadioReference.com; derived/aggregate classifications only — no affiliation or endorsement implied.

16.9% PUBLIC-SAFETY VOICE CHANNELS ENCRYPTED (NATIONAL, CHANNEL-WEIGHTED) 585 ENCRYPTED / PARTIAL PS SOURCES 3,139 COUNTIES COVERED 51 STATES + DC

Quotable facts

  • As of 2026-06-18, 16.9% of U.S. public-safety voice channels are encrypted (channel-weighted: conventional police/fire/EMS frequencies plus trunked-system talkgroups, partial counted at half weight).
  • 585 public-safety radio sources (agencies and trunked systems) are fully or partially encrypted across 3,139 counties in all 51 states and DC.
  • Per-state and per-county rates are source-weighted; the national headline is a distinct channel-weighted metric (see methodology). Both are published in the open dataset, each labeled with its weighting.
  • Encryption status is classified from the public enc field (0=clear, 1=partial, 2=encrypted) with mode corroboration; every record links back to its source for verification.

Please attribute to "Is My City Encrypted (ismycityencrypted.com)" and link the specific page or dataset you cite.

Open data & API

Derived aggregate downloads (CSV + JSON), a Frictionless data package, and a read-only CORS-open API. Full index at /data.

/dataset/imce-encryption-by-state.csv /dataset/imce-encryption-by-county.csv /dataset/imce-agency-classification.csv /dataset/datapackage.json /api/v1/stats /api/v1/states /api/v1/state/:code /api/v1/county/:ctid

Embeddable badges

Live SVG badges that show a place's current encryption status and grade. Copy the snippet under each.

Alaska public-safety encryption encryption badge 
<a href="/state/alaska"><img src="https://ismycityencrypted.com/api/v1/badge/state/AK.svg" alt="Alaska public-safety encryption encryption badge"></a>
Aleutians East public-safety encryption encryption badge 
<a href="/state/alaska/county/aleutians-east"><img src="https://ismycityencrypted.com/api/v1/badge/county/69.svg" alt="Aleutians East public-safety encryption encryption badge"></a>

Going Dark feeds

Subscribe to be alerted as new encryption is detected (zero PII, source-attributed).

RSS Atom JSON [ full feed → ]

Press contact

Questions, interviews, or data requests: [email protected]. A Binary Rogue public-interest project.